Original subtitles

Playboy is looking for a pinup girl.

If you think of who is going to be in layboy,

well, Lesia. Perfect.

Lesia Kahl went from an unknown waitress

to a Playboy ensation overnight.

But posing nude for Playboy can put a target on your back.

Lesia's boyfriend had a surprise waiting,

but she never showed up.

As soon as I walked in the room,

I knew it was a double murder.

How could someone look at her and do this?

Something's not adding up here at all.

What a hot mess.

In 1985, I was a police officer

assigned to the Homicide Division

of the Dallas Police Department.

I had to be at work at 7:00 a.m.,

so I was in bed.

But we had a pager.

And, you know, when that pager went off,

you knew that your sleep was over for the night

because you were going on an adventure.

It was a little after midnight

when we got called to the scene

to investigate a murder.

Two murder victims in a home

in that upscale, affluent neighborhood,

yeah, that was-- that's very out of place.

In my career, I was the lead detective on 196 murders.

I found them in every kind of condition.

As soon as we looked around the house,

we find two people, a man and a woman,

both bloodied and beat and obviously deceased.

There's blood everywhere.

There wasn't the, as I call,

the odor of death on the scene,

so we knew that it had just happened.

But we did determine that the female

that was found in that house was a layboy model.

Lesia Kahl.

Lesia had just appeared in the layboy issue

that featured Texas girls.

Playboy was always looking for the type of girl

from a small town who could just jump off of the page.

They wanted somebody who was beautiful, fresh-faced,

that would make the reader feel like

they could possibly meet this girl.

So layboy would scout places like universities,

upscale bars, things like that,

to find women that might not hear about it otherwise.

So the whole process for the Girls of Texas

started in the early part of 1984.

Playboy ent looking for new talent.

Someone like Lesia Kahl.

Lesia was beautiful.

Lesia and I were very close.

We were a big family, five children.

Lesia was the oldest.

I was number two.

With my dad being in the Air Force,

we moved a lot.

I remember I was going into the eighth grade

and she was going into the ninth grade.

And one of these girls said,

"Here comes your sister, the bitch."

And she said, "Nobody talks to my sister that way."

That was so cool.

She was a badass.

After high school,

our parents got orders to go to Germany.

Lesia and I didn't want to go.

That's when I moved out to Dallas.

I just wanted Lesia to come with me.

And she did. She arrived early '83.

This was the first time that we were both in a city-city.

We were in the nightlife.

The vibe in Dallas in the '80s was very sexually charged.

It was always crazy

with people being out until the sun came up.

Pretty much everybody in the country was excited about Texas girls.

The Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders were just starting out,

and I think that was part of the kind of hype

that was going on.

And, of course, Dallas as one of the most popular shows.

Dallas was a huge show in the '80s.

The sets were like so over-the-top,

like fantasy upscale.

The hair was big, there was a lot of makeup,

so it was very much high glamor in the '80s.

Confetti was the nightclub.

There would be a queue around the building

every night to get in.

So Lesia gets a job as a waitress there.

I was a coworker and a really good friend of Lesia,

and we did a lot of fun things together,

had some crazy nights at that nightclub.

It was just a really, really fun place

to be girls in the skimpy outfits.

You would go on the stage and you would perform.

So you've got to be kind of an outgoing person.

And she just exuded something special.

And the guys loved her.

Around spring of 1984, Lesia's been here a year,

she's working at Confetti's, and there's an ad that says,

"Playboy agazine is coming to Texas

and is looking for some models."

Playboy is looking for a pinup girl.

So around that time, Playboy increased their cross-country searches

to open up opportunities for women from smaller cities

to go be met in person and submit themselves.

But also it was great publicity for the brand.

Playboy s huge. It is a dream for so many women.

If you will, come right over here.

I'm gonna show you how to pose.

You wanna tilt your head.

I was with layboy as a photographer

from the late '70s up through 2003 or 2004.

So around 23, 24 years.

I want you to drop your chin down just a touch.

Right there. Hold it.

I never met David personally,

but I've seen his name everywhere.

He was a regular at Playboy.

He shot so many things.

Um, lean into this way a little bit.

When I came on board,

another photographer had been going out

to the various big college conferences,

doing these college girl pictorials,

and it became very popular.

So that's where they started thinking in terms of

using either identities or jobs

as a premise for the pictorials themselves.

And I was sent to several cities.

And we'd set up camp in a really nice hotel,

and then I would see girls.

And it was just an amazing way to meet these potential models

that ended up being either pictorial girls or a playmate.

My very first experience trying out for Playboy

was when I was in college in Portland, Oregon.

Playboy was searching for a special playmate

for the year 2000 issue.

I called ahead and found out, you know,

I needed to bring a bikini and go down there.

So that's what I did.

And I didn't get into the magazine that way.

I didn't appear in the magazine

until I had already been living

at the Playboy Mansion for several years,

and we started doing a reality show.

But back in the '80s,

people either had to mail their photos in

or they had to show up for a casting.

They sent me out to do the Girls of Texas

in the early part of 1984.

If you think of who is going to be in layboy,

someone sophisticated, classy, grace.

Well, Lesia. Perfect.

This is perfect.

There's an advertisement for a big casting

at the DoubleTree Hotel.

And I thought, "I'm going to the DoubleTree Hotel

to pick up pamphlets and flyers for Lesia."

And I was going to take them to her and go,

"You have got to do this."

I'm a loan processor.

It was very important to me to always look professional.

So I walk in, the other women in there

were not dressed like me at all.

I'm in this dress, buttoned up to here.

This lady comes to me and she says,

"Can you come back here, please?"

And then we go into one of the suites.

She looks me up and down.

And then comes back with two swimsuits

and asked me to put one on.

When Crystal came in to get the information

for her sister, Lesia,

I thought she was very attractive,

and I immediately knew that I could photograph her.

The photographer that was in there, he goes,

"I just want to take a couple of Polaroids of you."

I've never done anything like that before.

But, Playboy, their reputation was great.

And so I did it.

Crystal kept talking about her sister.

And I go, "Look, I'm sure your sister is wonderful.

I can't wait to meet her."

And I said, "Come back with your sister

I can do an interview with both of you."

I thought it would be really cool

to have sisters in the pictorial.

I needed to get to Lesia fast

because she'd be working tomorrow.

She needs to get the night off.

I go to see her and go,

"Lesia, I got to tell you about this."

And she was definitely interested.

When Lesia walked into the room,

she had a great look.

Dark hair, smoky eyes.

Very sexy.

And I'm just like, "Okay, this girl is hot."

And so I called both Lesia and Crystal.

It was rare for sisters to pose for layboy.

It was definitely appealing to Playboy

to publish anything kind of unexpected.

They had us both come in together

just to share the plan,

to prepare for our shoots.

We had no idea what was about to happen.

Crystal and Lesia were exactly the type of women

that Playboy iked.

They were fresh-faced,

they had the girl-next-door look,

they had voluptuous figures.

They were really the whole package.

Because they each had such a strong look,

I didn't want to lessen the strength of their photograph

by putting them together as a sister act.

So I photographed them separately.

They want to send me to the mountains.

When we did the shot of Crystal,

she's up in the rocks,

and she's got on kind of this army green outfit,

kind of thing.

You've got the vista in the background,

and all this kind of stuff. It's really cool.

The difference in their looks

made it a little more intriguing,

as well as the fact that they're both attractive

in different ways.

Lesia, they knew exactly where they wanted her.

Southfork Ranch,

where allas was filmed.

The show Dallas was so huge in the '80s.

So he says photos were actually shot

at the ranch where they filmed allas.

So they were very much with the Texas theme.

When I got to the location

and I saw this old-style bathtub...

And Lesia had this insanely nice body.

Gorgeous boobs, gorgeous legs, everything.

And so I told her, I said,

"You know what? I think I just want to photograph you nude in the tub."

And she's like, "Yeah!" She was like all for it.

So off she goes into the tub,

and I just went, "Oh, my gosh, this thing looks great."

I thought, "Wow, this girl's got playmate potential."

I mean, she was born to be there.

It's end of June, maybe early July of 1984.

And the magazine comes out early January 1985.

Lesia was probably already picturing in her head

this was a huge opportunity to her.

Huge.

She was going to be someone.

This is an exciting time.

The magazine had not come out yet,

but after the layboy shoot,

Lesia could not contain her excitement.

And she was telling everyone, "You know what?

I'm going to be in Playboy."

When she told us about that, I'm not the only one

that thought Lesia will be a hit in Playboy.

In a way, she was a little bit like a brunette Dorothy Stratten,

one of those ladies that had this kind of spark

that everybody saw and just went, "Wow!"

Lesia has a lot of admirers,

but she didn't have any boyfriends.

And then she met this guy Joey D'Amato.

Joey was actually a bartender at Confetti.

Everybody got along with Joey.

Joey got along with everyone else.

He was a nice-looking guy, pretty normal.

And I think that was part of, probably,

Lesia's appeal with him.

He was just this guy who thought she was beautiful

but was kind and caring, and not...

after something.

Joey was as close as Lesia could come

to being in a relationship.

However, she's going to be in layboy.

She's not going to commit to anything completely.

Lesia's photo could have definitely

led to more opportunities for her within layboy,

especially if she had the standout photo

of that pictorial.

Lesia has a fire in her now.

She wants to go as far as she can

in this newfound career.

And now she can actually do something about it.

So Joey is spending all this time at Confetti's.

He is with Lesia,

but that was also when he strikes up

a friendship with Koby Sandovsky.

Koby is known around town.

He is the local go-to for your party favors,

cocaine.

It was in the mid-'80s and there was a lot of cocaine.

There was a lot of cocaine at the time.

But it wasn't one of these scenes

where people were just blatantly doing drugs,

you know, on the bar or whatever.

It was more of kind of

a behind the scenes kind of thing.

Lesia and Joey, they liked to have fun.

They liked to party.

So it doesn't faze Lesia that he's hanging out with Koby.

He was good to her.

They were seeing each other pretty regularly.

And then the magazine comes out.

January 8, 1985,

the Playboy agazine spread hits the newsstands.

There you go. Appreciate it, everyone.

And usually it is the cover girl

that gets all the attention.

But, this time, it was Lesia.

And everyone is talking about the girl in the red tub.

Lesia's photo is really sexy.

She's in this bright red bathtub

in a bubble bath.

She's very fit.

She's got the tan lines, perfect '80s makeup.

Lesia definitely had the qualities

Playboy as looking for.

Playboy eported that they nearly doubled their sales that month.

Lesia Kahl went from an unknown waitress

to a Playboy odel sensation overnight.

It does make them a celebrity of sorts.

She is the girl in the red tub.

What a title.

And I'm sure she probably relished in it, too.

I mean, knowing her, she probably loved that.

I'm in the magazine,

but I'm moving away from the attention,

everything going on.

But Lesia's liking this attention.

She's doing well in it.

She's seeing Joey.

She's truly living her best life.

There's so many different ways a boyfriend or husband

could react to their significant other

posing for Playboy.

Some people love it,

and they're super-excited about it.

For Joey, he's feeling a lot of pressure.

I am sure Joey feels like he needs to make a grand gesture

in order to stay the boyfriend of his beautiful girlfriend.

Lesia's birthday is in February.

I was like, "That's my girl. I want to take care of her.

We're gonna have a party."

Joey wants to go all out,

surprise her, and make it a big night to remember.

Her birthday was Tuesday, February 26.

Her big party was Wednesday night, February 27th,

and I couldn't go.

But it was very important to him

to give this to her.

While Lesia is getting a bunch of attention

for her photo shoot in Playboy,

Crystal actually got married.

She's laying low while Lesia's living it up.

Friends are waiting for Lesia to arrive

and they're waiting and waiting,

and she's still not there.

People were concerned

because she was pretty punctual.

People thought maybe they got in an accident

or that maybe they had to stop and run an errand,

maybe go pick up some more booze.

The wait was pretty tense and pretty serious.

And they never showed up.

It's late at night,

and John Hudgens

goes to his friend Jeffrey Licker's house.

He's knocking on the door.

He's getting no answer.

He decides to let himself in.

He looks around the house

when he comes across a gruesome discovery.

He found two bodies in an upstairs bedroom.

So he went downstairs and called 911.

At 1:45 a.m., investigators arrive at the house

on Blackbird Lane.

John Hudgens directs them upstairs.

As soon as I walked in the room

and saw what I saw,

I knew it wasn't like a murder-suicide.

I knew it was a double murder.

The two victims had blunt force trauma to their heads.

Their heads are covered with plastic bags.

There's blood everywhere. This is a violent scene.

One of the first questions that investigators always have

is "Who are these people?

And what were they doing here?"

The 911 caller says that he's friends

with the homeowner, Jeffrey Licker.

And he determined by looking at the body

that it was absolutely not Jeffrey Licker.

He didn't know who those people were,

and he had been in that house a lot of times

and knew who's supposed to be there

and it's not them.

Police investigators did find identification on the male victim.

We were able to identify him as Koby Sandovsky

through his driver's license.

We had an Israeli identification card.

But beyond that, there wasn't a lot of information

about him.

Most ladies, when they go out,

they carry a purse with them.

The police find a wallet,

and that wallet belongs to Lesia Kahl.

It was Thursday night,

and the phone rings.

My husband answers it and it was a police officer.

And I knew before he even told me.

I could feel it. I could see it.

While he's talking, I started hearing this loud sound.

It sounded like somebody screaming like a child.

And then I realized it was me.

And I was just looking at him, saying...

"No, no, it couldn't be."

Lesia couldn't be gone.

There's no way she could be gone.

Who could have done this?

You never know how hard a task will be

until you start trying.

At the scene, we understand that

the homeowner is Jeff Licker.

Since one of the victims is not the homeowner,

where is he at?

Mr. Licker was an attorney.

He was a prominent tax attorney, uh,

in Dallas back at the time.

Jeffrey Licker is 29 years old

and he is known to let his friends

kind of come and go from his house

as needed.

They know how to get in and out,

and he frequently has guests.

Police found a lot of cocaine,

so they knew this was a place that people go to have fun,

do coke, hang out.

It was a party house.

At that point,

any kind of narrative could be possible.

You know, is he on the run?

Is he not-- is he unaware?

Was he a murder victim himself?

There's just so much they don't know

about Licker at this point.

But with no definite way of getting a hold of him,

police shift their focus to any additional information

that they can find there at the scene.

There was a car out front of the house

registered to Koby Sandovsky.

And they also found a phone in the car.

In the '80s, we didn't have cell phones,

and a select few had car phones.

Usually those were wealthier people or drug dealers.

So officers decide,

Well, let's call this last called number.

And so they dial the phone

and Lesia's boyfriend, Joey D'Amato, answers it.

So police ask him,

"Who called you from this number and when?"

And Joey tells them,

"My girlfriend, Lesia, called me around 9:30 p.m."

Joey has been waiting up all night

just wondering what the heck has happened to Lesia.

When Lesia just didn't show up for the birthday party,

there was time for probably a million things

to go through Joey's head.

Part of him was thinking that something bad

had happened to her.

We tell him that we've found a couple of people

that have been killed,

and we're doing an investigation.

He confirmed to us that when he talked to Lesia,

she said she was waiting on Koby.

Joey said that he was waiting on her

to get to this surprise party, but she never showed up.

And that Koby was giving her a ride.

So police are asking Joey,

"What is her relationship to Koby?"

Joey explains that Koby hangs out at Confetti's,

where Lesia worked.

And apparently he was a low-level drug dealer,

uh, in the Dallas area.

Lesia was a cocktail waitress,

and she had just appeared in layboy.

Posing nude for layboy

can put a target on your back,

and that can get very dangerous.

I first heard about Lesia's story

when someone reached out to me in my social media comments.

I was fascinated by it.

She was young, beautiful.

Her life was about to get so exciting.

When the magazine came out, it never crossed my mind

that our safety could be at risk

with this being in public like we now were.

It never even occurred to me.

I was devastated.

I never thought of it as someone targeting her.

I thought, "Oh, my God, how could this happen?"

When something like that happens,

your mind goes everywhere,

and Joey was the closest person I knew

that she was with.

The police invite Joey to come down to the station

and, uh, talk about the situation there.

They describe him as being very cooperative.

He's answering all their questions.

Apparently he was-- uh,

he was pretty heartbroke over the death of his girlfriend.

So he was-- he was very cooperative

with law enforcement at that point.

Joey was her number one.

But I had never heard the name Koby.

And Joey has sent him

to go pick up Lesia for her party.

Where did that come from?

Why didn't Joey go get her and then walk in with her?

Isn't that usually how a surprise party works?

Koby was like a shadow person

because I saw him on a few rare occasions.

I never spoke a word to him.

And it was very, very shocking

that Koby was with her that night.

At the police station, Joey said,

"Well, I was throwing a surprise party for her,

but I didn't have a ride for Lesia.

So I called my friend Koby and said,

'Hey, could you give her a ride?'

Koby said, 'Sure, of course I can.

But I do need to make a stop first.'"

And Joey admits that Koby is a low-level drug dealer.

So now police are asking Joey,

"Why is it that you chose to have him

give your girlfriend a ride somewhere?

Why did you put her safety in his hands?"

Police are interested to know

what their relationship was like at this point.

And Joey admits,

"Yes, Lesia's been getting a lot of attention lately.

I mean, she's got a layboy spread out on newsstands."

And, yeah, they've had some disagreements,

and he's been a little insecure.

But Joey is Lesia's boyfriend.

He was planning the party.

He couldn't run around and bring Lesia there.

Koby is one of his friends.

They party together, they hang out together.

It just made sense to him.

I'm not really suspicious of anyone

until I can start putting things together.

Joey was cooperative as to what he knew

and what was going on and the information he had.

There was a lot of talk about how odd it was

that Koby was the one who gave her the ride.

I think Joey probably regretted that

and probably still regrets that.

As you confirm things, you realize,

okay, Joey is probably, you know, being honest.

But from talking to the 911 caller,

we learned that the homeowner,

Jeff Licker's not probably, you know,

a goody two-shoes.

Now the focus was definitely on Jeff Licker.

Talk to him.

Two people ended up dead in your house.

Why are they there and you're not there?

So investigators start reaching out to more people

who knew Jeffrey Licker.

And they find out that Koby

is an associate of Jeffrey Licker.

Jeffrey Licker was very addicted to cocaine.

And Koby was his drug dealer.

But police are not able to locate him yet.

And then at about 1:30 p.m.,

a man walks into the Dallas police station

and says, "Hey, I have some information

on your homicide from last night."

And he introduces himself as 29-year-old Jeffrey Licker.

He's trying to figure out what's going on

with the double homicide last night,

and he wants to talk to somebody.

Licker proceeds to tell them

that he had been out all night drinking

and that he had recently heard about

the double homicide on the radio.

And decided, "I better go to the police station

and talk to them and find out what's going on

and see if there's any help I can give them."

I think Jeff came to the police station

to distance himself from any activity

and say he wasn't involved.

So Jeff starts telling us some things

that we know aren't right,

like he didn't know who the people were in the house.

And we confront him with that.

And then Jeff started to provide more information

that was truthful.

Licker finally admits he knows Sandovsky.

While they're interviewing Licker,

he gives the police a full written statement.

As far as I know, no one else has ever gotten

a voluntary statement from a lawyer.

You know, granted he's a tax attorney,

he's not a criminal attorney.

But you would think that attorney 101 is, you know,

you don't talk to the police without representation.

Uh, so that's kind of shocking.

According to Jeff, Koby had stolen a safe from him

with money and drugs in it,

and Jeff wanted to collect what was owed from that theft.

He had Sandovsky come over

under the ruse of he was going to buy some more drugs.

And when Sandovsky got there, he had a surprise waiting.

He had hired two individuals,

to collect the debt from Sandovsky

from Sandovsky previously stealing his safe.

So Jeff's story was that he hired them,

but he told the two men that, you know,

he did not want Koby injured in any way.

According to Licker, he also sees Lesia come in.

He doesn't know Lesia,

but he does recognize her from the Playboy agazine.

Then Jeffrey tells investigators

he left his house at 10:00 p.m.

and he went out drinking.

So they want to know,

"What did you see? What did you do?

What were you doing?"

And why hasn't he said anything about it?

The statement itself is not everything,

but it implicates him in hiring the actors

that caused the death of Koby and Lesia.

Police have this man who's coming in here

saying that he admittedly had two men hired,

essentially hit men, even though he says,

"Oh, they weren't supposed to harm Koby,"

and he doesn't think that anything bad's happening.

Something's not adding up here at all.

As we were learning and finding out the facts

of what happened,

what a hot mess.

I had to call my parents.

And my mom was already crying.

She knew.

She just-- she just knew

that something had happened to one of us

and she-- and she knew instinctively it was Lesia.

They had to get here.

Playboy omehow had reached out to me,

and they wanted to give something to my parents.

And I remember they got a $500 gift certificate

just to take care of the food while they were here.

The rest I almost don't remember.

I was really messed up.

In his statement,

Jeffrey Licker lets police know

that the two men hired

are Raymond Hackman and Joel Arnold.

Police track down two freight workers,

Raymond Hackman and Joel Arnold.

Once Hackman and Arnold are brought in,

they know they're in trouble.

Raymond Hackman was not talking,

but Joel Arnold gives a written statement.

And it's a lot different from the one police got

from Jeffrey Licker.

In his statement, Joel Arnold says that they were hired

by Jeffrey Licker to either collect the debt,

or to kill Koby.

And he says that Jeff Licker

promised to give them $5,000 to do it.

Licker also said that, once Koby was taken care of,

there was a girl out in the car

that they needed to take care of, too.

They saw Jeffrey Licker leave the house and return,

bringing Lesia Kahl upstairs.

And apparently they were going to get an extra $1,500

to kill her, too.

I remember when I heard,

the feeling was

how could someone look at her and--

and do this?

Lesia had been bludgeoned...

to death

with a hammer.

They got a trash bag

and put it over her head.

Yanked a lamp out of the wall and strangled her with it.

And that's how...

that's how she died.

It sickens me knowing that happened to her.

It's-- it's just...

Anyway... I mean, she was someone special.

And she had all this potential to go way beyond that.

And it was taken away from us.

When Lesia's story broke,

Playboy ust wanted to stay as far away from it as possible.

The philosophy was kind of,

if you don't say anything,

you know, you won't add fuel to the fire.

Based on the evidence and voluntary statements

from two of the three defendants

we were able to put together warrants

for the arrest of Jeff Licker,

Joel Arnold and Raymond Hackman

for the deaths of Koby Sandovsky

and Lesia Kahl.

This case never went to court. It all got pled out.

Joel Arnold and Raymond Hackman

both were sentenced to 30 years for killing Koby

and life sentences for killing Lesia.

Jeffrey Licker is convicted on two counts of murder,

and he's given ten years in prison

and ten years' probation.

But I really don't think someone

who orchestrated a crime like this

should be given such a light sentence.

"Oh, I just thought they were going to hurt him."

No. No, you didn't. No, you didn't.

If you told those guys to hurt him,

they would have hurt him.

They would have punched him in the nose and said, you know,

"Give me your drugs. Don't come back," or whatever.

We needed to make Jeffrey Licker be held responsible,

so we had a civil trial.

And to hit him where we could.

Two years after Lesia's murder,

her parents won a wrongful death lawsuit

against Jeffrey Licker,

and they were awarded $9.3 million from him

and his homeowner's insurance.

Joey was inconsolable.

We had people saying, "I heard what happened,"

and Joey would hear that and he would just fall apart.

Forty years have gone by, but when we talk about this,

it still, um...

just makes me so sad for what she could have been.

I think in the layboy world, she probably would have risen,

but I think she had more in her than that.

And it's so sad because

she never got to show the rest of the world

what a really wonderful person she is.

I love her.

I love her.

I miss her.

I want her to come back.

Even in my dreams, I... I want that again.

Lesia's story really affected me

because she was a young woman

with such a bright future ahead of her.

Of course, I can relate to her story.

She could have gone on to do anything,

and she had all of that stolen from her

strictly from being in the wrong place

at the wrong time.